Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi

As statistics go from tick marks to laptops, police struggle to make sense of trends

The San Francisco Police Department cannot precisely measure the number of domestic violence cases it handled before 2011, because investigators in the Special Victims Unit hand-tallied monthly records, and used changing and inconsistently understood categories of crimes. This story appeared as part of a special report on domestic violence in the Fall 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.

Far fewer charged than across the region, even with strongly worded ‘no-drop’ guidelines

Though San Francisco’s so-called “no-drop” policy requires pressing domestic violence charges when evidence is sufficient to convict, the District Attorney’s Office pursued just 28 percent of cases through to trial or plea bargaining over the last 6 years. This story appeared as part of a special report on domestic violence in the Fall 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi is facing two challengers in his bid for re-election: Vicki Hennessy, who spent three decades in the department and served as interim sheriff in 2012 (after Mayor Ed Lee suspended Mirkarimi over a domestic-violence case involving the new sheriff and his wife) and John Robinson, a retired sheriff’s commander.

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi says that the city’s jails are giving inmates the psychiatric services they cannot get at the major medical centers. Part of a special report on homelessness and mental health in San Francisco, in the fall 2014 print edition. Stories rolling out online throughout the fall.

The first substantive plan to protect tenants against displacement passed in San Francisco Tuesday. Supervisor John Avalos secured unanimously approval for the new rules, but some of his colleagues expressed misgivings about rushing into changes that could lead to unintended consequences for landlords.

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